Seminar series

Remigration of immigrants and reattraction of emigrants in the Netherlands, Spain, and Japan 1985-2025: What does this mean for liberalism? 

Speaker: Michael Sharpe, York College and The Graduate Center, The City University of New York and Malmö City Guest Professor of Migration Studies, Malmö University
Abstract: This paper examines state remigration policies or “pay to go schemes” for select legally resident unemployed immigrant communities and their families in the Netherlands, Japan, and Spain. They follow institutional patterns of historic emigration that legitimize boundaries of national belonging and shift with economic and societal pressures. The “symbolic politics” and rhetoric surrounding remigration policies provide a litmus test for comparing reethnicization (reinforcing ties with emigrants across foreign born generations), deethnicization (easing access for all immigrants) (Joppke, 2005), and combined iterations thereof in the Netherland, Japan, and Spain. While Dutch citizenship has become easier to obtain for overseas former Dutch citizens, a recently ended remigration program has been instituted for unemployed and ageing “ethnic minorities” and asylum seekers providing dual nationals renounce their Dutch nationality. Spain and Japan established remigration programs to cope with the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. (Sharpe 2010; Milly 2014) Although Spain recruited immigrants in the 2000s, particularly from Latin America, based on the ideation that there are closer to an idealized notion of an Iberoamerican nation with liberal citizenship policies, (Hazan 2014:373,381) it facilitates the paid voluntary return of nationals (non-EU citizens) and their families from 20 countries (mainly Latin American countries) with which they have social security agreements while simultaneously providing overseas Spanish citizens financial incentive to repatriate. (Schurr and Stoltz, 2010:63) The overseas Latin American Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) that were since 1990 called “back” to Japan to work as guest workers were being paid to repatriate. These remigration schemes are a symbolic attempt to control unwanted immigration and demonstrate address of critical “ethnic” social and economic problems, protection of national identity, and respect for international law.
Date and time: Tuesday September 15, 12:30–14:00
Location: B706, Stockholm School of Economics

Do next-door co-ethnic neighbors improve labor market outcomes? Evidence from Sweden

Speaker: Ahmet Girisken (Stockholm School of Economics)
Abstract: This study examines co-ethnic peer effects in immigrants' immediate residential surroundings and asks whether next-door co-ethnic neighbors shape their labor-market outcomes. Detailed Swedish registers allow me to identify immigrants living on the same floor and follow their employment trajectories and workplace connections over time. Combined with an interacted fixed-effects design, the data enable comparisons among immigrants from the same country and arrival cohort who initially lived in the same building but had different numbers of co-ethnic neigbors on their floors. Preliminary findings suggest that greater co-ethnic exposure is initially associated with lower employment, although this effect fades over time. At the same time, it increases the probability of working at the same workplace as a floor neighbor. The more favorable employment and workplace-connection effects are concentrated among men, whereas women experience negative employment effects. Overall, the findings suggest that immediate co-ethnic peers create lasting workplace connections but do not improve employment prospects on average, with markedly different consequences for men and women.
Date and time: Tuesday September 22, 12:30–14:00
Location: B706, Stockholm School of Economics

Emigration behavior among second-generation children of immigrants in Sweden

Speakers: Wooseong Kim (Karolinska Institutet) and Andrea Monti (Center for Migration and Integration Research, Stockholm School of Economics) 
Topic: Emigration behavior among second-generation children of immigrants in Sweden
Date and time: Tuesday December 8, 12:30–14:00
Location: B706, Stockholm School of Economics